Prepping and Priming

I began by checking the pieces (again) for imperfections, and found very little
to fix. Along the bottoms of the dirt mounds, there was a slight lip in a few spots
that I trimmed off - but easily something I could have left alone and few people would
have noticed. The sides of some of the boards (which support the inside trench walls)
seemed unfinished, but then I decided that the boards were supposed to look
like that (eroded, rotten boards, right?).

The only recurring problem is that, in the grooves in the grooved metal sheeting,
there are occasional "specs." I tried trimming them off, but then decided that since I
was going to shade the grooves anyway, the imperfections wouldn't be visible. (In
retrospect, I was wrong - see below.)

As per the directions from Armorcast,
I then washed the pieces with mild dishwashing detergent and a stiff brush. I used
an inexpensive (Wal-Mart brand) spray enamel for a primer coat, choosing flat white as
my color of choice.

Then I painted the corrugated metal areas with FolkArt 667, Gunmetal Gray.

I applied black ink (Citadel Shadow Black) diluted with water as a wash to
the interior.

I finished off by painting over the dirt areas with Apple Barrel color
Brown Oxide.

everything was protected with a protective coat (Testors Dullcote).

What I didn't mention was that, due to this really bad sequence of painting steps,
I had to do a lot of touch-ups - gunmetal paint on the wood, and everything where it slopped
onto the sand color. What I should have done was:

paint the corrugated metal areas with Gunmetal Gray

paint the interior with Burnt Umber

apply black ink as a wash to the interior

paint the dirt with Sand

paint over the dirt with Brown Oxide

spray with protective coat

Why I Did It This Way

First let me say a few things about "magic paints." As I've said before, I'm particularly happy with the technique of using Americana Sand as a base for "dirt,"
followed by Apple Barrel Brown Oxide. What I like about the Brown Oxide is that,
like many Apple Barrel paints, it is "runny" enough to make an excellent heavy wash
(adding just a touch of water).

Another "magic paint" for me is also an Apple Barrel color, Burnt Umber. Like the
Brown Oxide, this color can be mixed with water to make a wash of any kind of consistency
desired. Over white primer, this can be anything from aged greyish wood (very light wash)
to dark creosote-soaked timbers (no dilution). I used a "medium" wash for this project.

Why the ink wash? Two reasons. First, I wanted to achieve a dark and muddied look with
the finished trench, and the black would tone everything darker. Second, I found that the
fine scribing in the wood needed something to make it more visible, and the ink worked well
to settle into the crevices and make them distinguishable. (The black also settled between
the floor boards, leaving the space between the boards suitable dark and "deep.")

Final Thoughts

This was a quick-and-easy project, and I'm comfortable with the final result. Some have
told me that dirt isn't brown, but it is on my tabletop. :-)

My only (minor) regret is that I didn't clean up the "grit" in the corrugated metal
grooves. What I thought was that the grit wouldn't show up since I was doing a "dark"
interior, but I forgot that any metallic color (such as gunmetal) acts to highlight
imperfections.